Kinlock Tournament: The Kinlock Family remembers their little brother David

By GEORGE ALBANO Hour Staff Writer

Published
4:38 pm EDT, Thursday, August 13, 2015

The older siblings of David Kinlock, (l-to-r) Einar, Karen and Ray Kinlock, hold the original David Kinlock Sportsmanship Award the International Little League created in 1971, a year after he lost his life in an accident. In 1975, the David Kinlock Memorial Tournament began. The championship game that first year was played at the Broad River Little League field the Kinlock siblings are standing on. (Hour photo/Erik Trautmann)

The older siblings of David Kinlock, (l-to-r) Einar, Karen and Ray Kinlock, hold the original David Kinlock Sportsmanship Award the International Little League created in 1971, a year after he lost his life in

The older siblings of David Kinlock, (l-to-r) Einar, Karen and Ray Kinlock, hold the original David Kinlock Sportsmanship Award the International Little League created in 1971, a year after he lost his life in an accident. In 1975, the David Kinlock Memorial Tournament began. The championship game that first year was played at the Broad River Little League field the Kinlock siblings are standing on. (Hour photo/Erik Trautmann)

The older siblings of David Kinlock, (l-to-r) Einar, Karen and Ray Kinlock, hold the original David Kinlock Sportsmanship Award the International Little League created in 1971, a year after he lost his life in

Kinlock Tournament: The Kinlock Family remembers their little brother David

1 / 4

Back to Gallery

This is the fifth in a five-part series on the 40-year history of the Kinlock Tournament.

For 40 years, the David Kinlock Memorial Tournament has brought joy, excitement and entertainment of the highest degree to local fans of all ages, whether they were playing, coaching or just watching.

But there’s no question who three of the biggest fans of Norwalk’s annual summer youth baseball tournament have been since its inception in 1975.

Karen, Ray and Einar Kinlock have had a very special place in their heart for the tournament that honors the memory of their younger brother, who tragically lost his life in 1970.

Perhaps the only two bigger fans were their parents, Martha and Raymond Kinlock, who both passed away in 2000 within five months of one another. And they were huge Kinlock Tournament supporters right to the end.

But their three surviving children have continued that family passion, never more so than this summer as the Kinlock Tournament celebrated its 40th anniversary.

Karen, the oldest, is now 67 and living in Wilton. Ray, 65, resides in Pennsylvania, while Einar (a Danish name pronounced I-nar) is 65 and also makes his home in Wilton now.

But on Wednesday, the three retired teachers were all back in Norwalk for the day. In fact, they congregated at the Little League field in Broad River, the same field where the very first Kinlock championship was decided in 1975.

It didn’t take long, either, for the memories to start flowing.

“I remember the bowling alley used to be over there,” Einar, pointing to the right, said. “And there was a pizza place right down the road, Uncle Joe’s.”

Broad River Lanes, of course, is now gone — replaced by a strip mall — but Uncle Joe’s is still there, Einar was told.

“And Carvels was right across the street,” Ray interjected, before adding with a laugh. “With sprinkles. Always with sprinkles.”

He had traveled the farthest, two and half hours from New Hope, PA, to be there, and looking across the field in the other direction, he said, “this neighborhood is Norwalk with all these Capes (houses). This was like our old neighborhood.”

The Kinlocks grew up on Rome Street, right off Strawberry Hill Avenue, the street across from Naramake School.

“We all grew up thinking we were Italian,” Karen said. “I was crushed when I found out we weren’t.”

Instead, their father was Scottish and their mother Danish.

“And we were all redheads,” Karen said.

Including David Kinlock, the youngest in the family. He would’ve turned 58 in two weeks, on Aug. 28, which will be the 40th anniversary of when the International Little League West all-stars defeated the National LL 1-0 in the final game of the first Kinlock Tournament to win the championship. And on the very same field the Kinlock siblings gathered on Wednesday.

“We all started playing baseball in the community league in town when we were really small,” Ray said.

“The boys had no choice,” Karen added with a laugh. “Prior to World War II, our father played on the Giants farm team, but then he got drafted and went to war. He loved baseball, though.”

“And mother was a rabid baseball fan, too,” Einar said.

“We all played, but David was the jock of the family,” Ray noted.

“He loved all sports, but his love of baseball was so focused,” Karen agreed.

Neither of his two older brothers played Little League, but David played in the Norwalk International Little League for the Norwalk Athletic Association team. His last year in the league was 1970 and he turned 13 at the end of the summer.

“I just bought him his first pair of Adidas spikes,” older brother Ray said. “I called him Squirt and on his birthday I said ‘Ok, Squirt, what do you want for your birthday?’ and he said Adidas spikes.”

“We all saved all summer so we could get him those spikes,” Karen said.

“He slept in them,” Ray laughed.

But David Kinlock didn’t get a chance to use those brand new spikes very much. Less than a month after his 13th birthday, his life abruptly ended.

“It was Sept. 21, 1970. He had just turned 13,” Karen painfully recalled. “He was playing with his two best friends. They were throwing a football and it got stuck on the top of an evergreen tree. CL&P had an electrical wire running through the tree.”

“You couldn’t see the wire,” Einar pointed out.

“David was sitting on top of the tree and when he bent over to get the football he fell into the wire,” Karen continued. “His friends tried to grab him, but couldn’t help him.”

David Kinlock was electrocuted and died instantly. The Kinlock family was devastated. Einar and Ray had already left to return to college.

“I left for college in Georgia,” Ray said. “As soon as I got the news, I came right home.”

It took longer, however, for word to reach Einar.

“Unfortunately, I had left and drove to Cleveland to pick up my roommate and then we drove back to college in Mexico City,” he explained. “I never knew what happened to David for six days.”

Remember, this was long before cell phones.

“They finally got a hold of me and I jumped right in my car and drove back to Norwalk.”

“So neither one of them were home. I was the only one,” Karen said. “I had just started teaching at Nathan Hale and David just started eighth grade there.”

The loss was especially crushing for Raymond and Martha Kinlock, who experienced losing a child for the second time.

“We had an older sister, Ann, who died when she was two years-old,” Karen pointed out. “My mother was six months pregnant with me when she died. She would’ve been the oldest.”

“You never get over the loss of a child, especially when they’re young,” Einar said. “This was their second loss, too.”

“David and Ann are buried next to each other at Fairfield Memorial Park in Stamford,” Karen said. “David’s headstone has a baseball player on it.”

The following year, the International Little League decided to honor the memory of one of their recent graduates with the creation of the David Kinlock Sportsmanship Award, which would go to a graduating 12 year-old at the end of every season.

The Kinlock family was presented the original trophy symbolic of the award. The three siblings even brought it with them to the field the other day.

But this was not your typical trophy. No, this was a bronze trophy designed by New York sculptor Frank Eliscu, the same man who designed the famous Heisman Trophy in 1935. He actually saw David Kinlock play baseball.

“He was visiting the area and was down the beach one day when he saw kids playing at the Little League field,” Karen said. “Somehow he noticed David, maybe it was because of his bright red hair, but he found out later what happened to him and wanted to sculpt the trophy.”

“He was so touched by David’s story that he wanted to do something,” Einar added.

The bronze trophy depicts an outfielder — which David was — reaching up to catch a ball.

“But it’s not just catching a ball,” Einar said. “It’s catching a dream.”

That dream continued four years later, in 1975, when five of the city’s youth baseball leagues got together and held an intracity round-robin tournament and decided to call it the David Kinlock Memorial Tournament.

“We were flabbergasted,” Karen said. “We were so honored and so grateful that his memory was still being perpetuated.”

And nobody was more appreciative than Mr. and Mrs. Kinlock, who were part of the opening and closing ceremonies the first year and several years after that.

“My father would go down to almost every game, but he did not want to be the center of attention,” Karen said. “Unless he was asked to be part of the ceremonies, he always stayed in the background. He did not want to take the attention away from the kids. He got such pleasure just watching them play.

“Even when my dad was terminally ill, as long as he could drive he would go down the beach and watch them play. I can remember every August, he didn’t care how sick he was, he’d go down with his oxygen tank. My mom, too, with her oxygen tank.”

Raymond Kinlock usually succeeded remaining in the background. But every so often, Bob Mendence, one of the key people behind starting the tournament and then keeping it going, would spot him.

“Dad would drive down to Calf Pasture, park his car and open the windows, and watch the kids play,” Ray said. “Bob Mendence would always come over and talk to him.”

Then when the senior Kinlock couldn’t drive any more, his son Ray would take him to games.

“I used to go over and say ‘Where do you want to go?’ and he’d say ‘The Beach.’ So I’d drive him to the beach and say ‘Where do you want me to park?’ and he’d say ‘Facing the ballfield.’ He just wanted to watch the kids play.”

“Even when my mom and dad couldn’t get down there, they always followed the tournament in the newspaper,” Karen said. “But it also was bittersweet for them because every year it brought back memories of David and they would tear up. I’m tearing up now.”

But that didn’t upset the Kinlock family as much as when Little League Baseball in Williamsport tried their best to derail the tournament because it wasn’t an officially sanctioned Little League tournament and some non-Little League teams participated.

“I think they were missing the point,” Karen said. “They were politicizing the kids. This was a tournament for kids interacting with kids. But who was going to suffer? The kids, all because of adults miles away making decisions.”

“Some leagues felt outside pressure, but the board didn’t budge,” her brother Ray added. “This tournament has been so youth empowering. It gives you rivalries, but healthy rivalries. It makes the tournament richer, not monetarily, but through social skills.”

“It makes the trophy more prophetic, too,” Einar added. “It stands for overcoming all the politics and not giving up.”

Yes, the David Kinlock Memorial Tournament has overcome that and many other obstacles the last 40 years and is still going strong.

Even the David Kinlock Sportsmanship Award is still around 44 years later. After the International Little League merged with two other leagues in 2008 to form the new Norwalk Little League, the Kinlock Sportsmanship Award continued without a hitch.

“Our coaches vote at the end of every season and select a deserving player to receive the David Kinlock Sportsmanship Award,” Norwalk LL President Paul Grillo said. “We kept it going.”

And now his league and the Norwalk Cal Ripken League are making sure the David Kinlock Memorial Tournament, one of this city’s true treasures, keeps going, too.

“It’s a staple in Norwalk,” Rocco Cundari III, a former Kinlock Tournament coach and board member, said. “The best thing that can happen is it stays around for another 40 years.”

David Kinlock’s older siblings hope he’s right. After all, the first 40 years have been pretty good.

“It was brilliant of the original board for taking it and making it an annual event,” Ray Kinlock said.

“It’s not about the competition, but a celebration of the game,” Einar Kinlock agreed. “It’s about the sheer pleasure of playing the game.”

“All of us are absolutely shocked that it has continued as long as it has,” Karen Kinlock concluded. “But it brings us so much joy every year. It really does.”